04/20/2009

AIB Animation: The Ottawa Trip (OIAF)

We heard that last years AIB trip to the 2008 Ottawa International Animation Festival (OIAF) was a definite good time. The AIB blog recently had a chance to ask Tim Finn a few questions about the event, animation scene, and a night in jail (well, a hostel that was converted from a jail- close enough!)... read for yourself and enjoy:

What animation festival did you attend in Ottawa?

In September we attended the 2008 Ottawa International Animation Festival. OIAF has been running for more more than
30 years, and is the second-biggest animation festival in the world
after Annecy in France (which sort of grew out of Cannes). We're
really fortunate to have such an event relatively close. It's not like
we're flying to Los Angeles or Croatia.

The
festival is five full days of screenings and retrospectives. It's an
event where the business, education, and the
artform converge. You can walk up to a filmmaker and ask "How did you
do that?" or simply say "I really like your film."Cartoon
Network sponsors the big picnic, and the company's Development VP is
handing out business cards. There are Q&As and demos where you can
learn how techniques work. And yet it's all in a relaxed atmosphere. The biggest stress for me is not skipping lunch because there's so much
to do. To be fair, though, I'm sure seniors have an added stress of
bringing portfolios or business cards and worrying about how to turn
this into a networking opportunity.

Ottawa just a bit outside of Boston, How is the animation scene there?

How did the students respond to the event?, any memorable highlights you would like to share?

The students responded well. A trip like this works on several
levels. We share a bus with Museum School, and this year we also took
some
MassArt alums. In that way we're expanding the student view of
animation in Boston. This coming year Harvard's animation students are
taking a bus as well. For some of our students this is their first
trip out of the country. There's no culture shock, since the
English-speaking part of Canada is about as similar as one could hope
for. (Though I think some culture shock is good, so I encourage
everyone to travel far and wide.) Students stay at a hostel, probably
another first. Did I mention the hostel is a converted jail?

Then
there's the festival content itself -- films old and new, foreign and
domestic, made by a studio or an individual. Some are funny, some are
sad. It's a reminder that animation, seen in America as kids' stuff,
is a technique, not a genre.

A highlight for me was getting a
DVD compilation for Filmtecknarna, a studio in Sweden. I saw a
life-changing short in college called "Revolver," but I'd never seen it
on DVD until a year ago. But that disc was only available from one
Swedish website. I was nervous about typing my credit card into fields
I couldn't understand, so I approached Jonas Odell, one of the
directors, who was a jury member at this year's festival. Not only did
he have a copy of the disc, he gave it to me. I didn't have anything
to trade, so as a "thanks" I'm going to mail him a DVD of my own.

In
terms of student highlights, I heard Mark Mullaney makes some mean
pancakes. You probably meant films, though. If memory serves, Justin
King was wowed by the Richard Williams Q&A. Williams, best known
for "Who Framed Roger Rabbit," is a humble guy, but has actually earned
that "living legend" status that gets tossed around.

In
terms of site-specific festivals, it depends on how far one can travel
and when one has time off. Annecy in France is the big one. It's so
big you cannot do everything. It takes over the city in a way that
would surprise us Americans who are used to animation being the ugly
stepchild of film. I've heard good things about the Animation Block
Party and ASIFA-East, both in New York City.

And
then there are film festivals which don't necessary push animation, but
show it. Locally, there's the Independent Film Festival of Boston.
IFFB isn't on students' radar since it's the last week of April,
concurrent with finals, but I spent a happy weekend bouncing between
the Brattle and the Somerville Theatre last year, soaking up movies
that will never reach "regular" theatres.

Some students are hesitant to submit works to festivals or other events. Do you have any advice on where to start when trying to get animations out to a new audiences?

Unfortunately domestic festivals tend to have entry fees, and though
international ones often don't (because of corporate sponsorship or
governement funding), shipping can be pricey. It's a little like a job
interview. Know the company beforehand so you don't go in cold. Your
film may not fit the character of a certain festival, but may be a
great match for another. Start with the big festivals, and look for
some smaller, younger ones that may not have the largest applicant
pool. The paperwork is easier now that more festivals want you to
apply online through withoutabox.com.

Ultimately,
a festival is just a selection of opinions. Five people in a room
watch 200 or 2000 films, and then pick some. Don't get discouraged if
you're rejected. Quality will out, as they say. If you have a great
film, it will get into some festivals. And once you're in one or two,
people see your work, and sometimes an organizer of a different
festival is in the audience where your film screens.

Are there any animation(s) that we should look forward to seeing?

I've got a few favorites from the last year of the festival circuit.
"Waltz With Bashir" is an animated feature film from Israel. It looks
and feels like a documentary, and all the events are historically
accurate, but it's not technically a documentary. In it a filmmaker
starts to remember his role as a soldier in the 1982 Lebannon War.
It's animated in Flash in a realistic style, with saturated colors and
photo-referenced backgrounds. It was up for an Oscar, and didn't win,
but did play in Boston for a few months, so there were plenty of
chances to see it. The art director has had a residency at Brown or
RISD (or both?), actually, for the last few months.

For shorts I really enjoyed "The Control Master," a
cut-out film using what look like images from 1950s magazines and comic
books, by a British animator named Run Wrake. From Boston there was a
great film by Kara Nasdor-Jones of MassArt called "I Slept With Cookie
Monster," about a relationship that didn't go well. A narrated film
with what looked like oil patels on paper, but I could be mistaken.